The flight back to Colombia was the most pleasurable experience I’ve had in a long time, no doubt about it: better than flying to conferences or commercial triumphs, better than Roberto’s pleas or saying goodbye to my friends. As we took off, I saw, through my aching, swollen eyes, the Valley of Mexico’s two volcanoes, the two mythical lovers: the warrior and the princess. Sleeping Iztaccíhuatl was craggy and stripped of her snow; Popocatépetl spouted steam. Bidding them farewell from a distance, I felt the magic again, like when I first fell in love with the modern ruin that sprawls at the lovers’ feet. When did it lose its lustre in my eyes? I really couldn’t say. Mexico City rejuvenated me. I learned to live with my chronic illness, to drink mezcal without my blood sugar skyrocketing and to love a stranger who offered what he could.

Then, little by little, the city swallowed me whole: its vices, its machismo, its acid rain, its omnipresent film of smog, its hypocritical people, Roberto and his lies. One day I bought a magazine and an insert about the Caribbean fell out. Out of the blue, I remembered this was where I came from, this world of outlandish beauty. After my worst attack of hypoglycaemia since my parents’ death, after a nightmare day that culminated in a fainting spell in rush-hour traffic, I decided I need to be here: isolated, alone.

Dogs bark.

The cicadas help me forget: I’m lulled by their sweet cadence, and for a moment I stop thinking about how my blood sugar levels have to stay under 130 milligrams per decilitre, but that if they drop below seventy I could pass out, that I learned all of this as if to distract myself from my years-old grief so I wouldn’t die, too. But my mind repeats it again, like a lightning bolt, a survival kit. I pricked my fingers every day, all day long; I developed tiny calluses on the tips; every single one of my three daily insulin injections was sheer torture. They don’t hurt anymore. I don’t even feel them. Then came the sensor I use now: I can check my levels by scanning a little black monitor. It has said 100, stable, for the past two hours. I have to count all the time. It’s an automatic operation by now: how many grams of sugar and carbohydrates, how many insulin units, how many hours I fast, calories, how many minutes of physical activity. Now that I think about it, my life was easier here.